


Stories of the Second Self: Roll the Hard Six

by John_Steiner



Series: Alter Idem [23]
Category: Urban Fantasy - Fandom, biker gangs - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:42:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22514938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/John_Steiner/pseuds/John_Steiner
Summary: Gerard Carey's spontaneous death and raising into a vampire was the last shackle to fall off his already poor self-restraint. Fired from the bank he managed, society collapsing all around, Gerard decided to revel in the chaos. Gerard describes the other five vampire he rode with and how he is the last one standing.
Series: Alter Idem [23]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1618813





	Stories of the Second Self: Roll the Hard Six

There used to be six of us. Now I'm alone.

It's night, so I can ride without covering up in multiple sheets, looking like some Arabic nomad with welding goggles. You'd think, that with the federal government collapse, that I wouldn't be on the run from the military, but I am.

There was Sam, Orson, Nadine, Larry, and Rob.

If you knew us beforehand, you'd never think we'd join up and ride together in a half-dozen posse. However, every one of us spontaneously turned into vampires. We don't know why, but we were damn sure not going to give up on living just because we were dead.

Only one of us was a biker prior to the world going weird. Larry was also our teacher in bike mechanics. From him we learned to ride, to fix our Hogs, how to fight, and how to end a fight before it started. He was a tough son-of-a-bitch even before getting vampire strong. You picture a bad-ass Hell's Angels member weighing twice as much as the next guy, then strip away the beer gut and rack up tenfold strength, that was Larry.

They say the true tough guy doesn't need to look for a fight, but Larry showed us that was bullshit. Unfortunately, he didn't shut that off when turning, and so after we hooked up with him, we'd all have to throw down.

Larry was the toughest, but Nadine was the most vicious. She'd be the one who'd bleed out a father while the family was forced to watch. Not that we weren't complicit, seeing as we held the kids and wife down. She'd flash those teeth, slam a guy to the ground, and ride him like an electric bull, before slicing his neck open or just tearing away with her teeth. Sometimes she'd undo the dude's pants and force him to get hard by throttling when it worked. If it didn't? See plan A.

In contrast, Rob was chill. He was that stereotypical lone drifter before joining our crew, and maintained being aloof after. While the crazy shit went on, he'd sit in the back carefully surveying the chaos, and then pick one of the last victims. We started calling him shark, because he was all about the feeding with no funny business. And he was cold. Even when he didn't have to feed, he never hesitated to kill someone quick, if he thought they'd scream loud enough for help to come or if they might make a break for it.

What to say about Sam? He was over sixty when he turned, and while vampirism regressed his age he still acted like an old man. His strain of mean was verbal, and not just with the food. We put up with his shit because he knew how to bury bodies quick, when it came time to start hiding our trail. We always suspect he was the Zodiac Killer or something like that. Only Larry was daring enough to ask, and the stare he got back made my borrowed blood run cold.

Orson was an anal retentive religious type from somewhere in the deep south. However, the dark side of that was his preference for mousy women or young girls to feed on. He ranted and railed when a law was passed barring marriages with thirteen year olds. He might've been a registered child sex offender, but in his case we never cared to ask.

Then there's me. I used to manage a bank, until one day I couldn't go outside without burning. Lost my job that month, and they didn't know I was a vampire when firing me. It was assumed I was a cokehead, because no one pullin' down six figures a year does anything less than cocaine. I had the quick temper of a user, but without the habit, so I guess fate made sure I was caught up. People hated working under me, and I kinda preferred it that way.

We were sloppy at first, hitting roadside hotels or late night diners to feed on people. Once the five supernatural races hit the news the highway patrol caught onto what they were seeing, and had no trouble tracing the pattern of ruined lives and bloodless corpses we left.

By the time of our first shootout, state troopers were already outgunned. We'd hit a small town bank, largely because it was the same franchise I worked, so I knew the basic security measures, if not the same codes. They were all pulling up outside, and the megaphone thing started.

"Drop your weapons, place your hands up on your heads, get down on your knees," the state police officer called through his handset, to be amplified by the car's external audio.

"Fuck!" Orson cursed, looking out the windows, "That was fast."

"It's night," Larry remarked, "It's not like anyone slipped their hand to hit an alarm button-- did they?"

He looked around, to which we all shook our heads. Rob checked around to be sure we hadn't bumped one by accident.

Needless to say, we were in no mood for doin' time, and they had no idea what they were in for. It started with us jumping through windows guns blazing, just like you'd imagine in the movies, but from there it went dark quick.

Larry got a shot through his wrist, making him drop his piece. "God-fuckin-dammit! Alright, that does it!"

He took several more rounds rushing the nearest car, and grabbed a cop to feed on right there. Others had to stop shooting, even as the guy Larry fed off of begged them to fire.

It's like they had forgot about the rest of us. So with a shrug, I pumped a few out from the twelve gauge, and then Nadine leapt over a car to get right in the thick of it. She had three throats slit, before they realized she was in their face. Nadine sure loves her high heel kicks.

The rest of us didn't have to be so careful in our aim, and Larry caught a load of buckshot from me, "Fuckin' serious, dude!? I'm eatin' here!"

It was over before we knew it, and we thought we came out on top and in the clear. Then Sam came across Orson laying on the ground not moving. Of course, it's hard to do much of anything when your head is six feet away from your neck. That's the day we realized we were immortal, not invincible.

That was also our last run-in with state troopers or local police. After that, national guard units were called up one state at a time. We'd cross into another state and, not two weeks in, the boys in green would show up. It's when we slipped into Ohio that the game got fuckin' real.

It wasn't human soldiers we squared off with last. Angels cruised between rooftops, werewolves hit back allies, and big ass mother fuckin' giants rolled through main roads like goddamn kings of the streets. Larry's mouth hit the floor at first sight of a guy more than twice as tall, and the next second Larry was sawed in half with a minigun.

He tried crawling away, but another guardsman popped a grenade pin and just shoved it in Larry's mouth. It was an incendiary grenade, and I can still hear the gagged scream, when Larry's head burned. Some of his brain must've still been intact, when the first fiery flashes broke through his skull. His body kept twitching.

Most of the werewolf soldiers were in human form, but a couple weren't and ended up tracking Nadine down. She was stronger than the two of them, but werewolves, it turns out, are agile sons of bitches. I've never seen a mortal man take the beatdown one of those howlers handled and THEN get up and rip a head off in seconds. Nadine honestly never expected the guy to get up after what she doled out.

Rob did what I expected Rob to do. He stepped out into the middle of the road, like a wild west gunslinger waiting for the sheriff to stand off against him. The Guard were havin' none of that, and called in a Black Hawk helicopter to rain down rocket and minigun fire. The fable goes that you need wooden stakes to kill us, which isn't true by the way. Yet, being blown to enough pieces seems to work even better.

Seeing the gig was up, Sam ran for his bike. He just hopped on, when someone with a Barret sniper rifle from a rooftop took the top half of his head off. The next shot went right through the vertebrae in his neck. Dead and done.

At least it gave me the chance to make a break for it. That's what I'm doing now. I bobbed and weaved through the streets and open fields, while rockets poured down from above. I guess they just ran out after using so much everywhere else, so the Black Hawk peeled away and headed back.

So here I am in I-70 and about to turn south. On the radio, I hear that they got some semblance of order restored in Cincinnati. An ironic place for me to consider safe, but maybe in the mayhem and disorder no one will know my past from paperwork or files.


End file.
